I gave up on dating and women.
I’m 36, a dude.
I was a bit of a late bloomer, when friends started to be pining for girls I just didn’t understand what all the fuss was about, I just wanted okayish grades and have night’s over to play games with my friends. It came later, I was a weirdo like many other folks, tried unsuccessfully to find myself a girlfriend.
After a while I looked in the mirror and admitted I wasn’t really a catch, more of an immature kid with no social skills and little to offer. So I worked on that, did sports, joined cooking classes and literature clubs. I liked it, met a few people, made friends with some of them, but it never blossomed into more.
I joined dating apps, even hired a dating coach, and strongly recommend to stay away from it.
At the end of the day, I never had someone interested in me.
As time went on, the idea of intimacy and relationship started to appear like a fantasy, like something that’s real for others but just a fancy part of my imagination for me. The idea of someone wanting to spend time with me and enjoying intimacy feels weird and foreign, made me feel more and more different from my friends and other people.
After a while I became so disconnected that I ditched dating apps and stopped trying to flirt and date. It went slow, it’s not an active process, it’s just dropping one thing after the other without noticing until you’re out of the dating pool. I’m realizing it now.
I guess it’s some form of defense mechanism after feeling like I lost so much time trying to date/flirt. To not lose more I only consider other folks as friends and nothing more, try to ignore and reduce my libido as much as possible as masturbation is a loss of time and don’t like fantasizing about intimacy. I avoid romantic movies or songs too.
Instead, I try to find all the other things I can enjoy alone to pass the time and make it a good day. I prepare a new recipe for when my sister comes with her kids to eat, I work abroad six months at a time and get to see new sights and cultures, I read good books in the cozyness of my room and write my own, I do sports and run in the forests and it feels good.
I’m alone and do feel lonely and touch-starved at times, but I can handle the feelings and go to sleep with a smile after a day well spent, and that’s good enough.
If you’re read it all, thank you, I just had to put it out somewhere. Have a wonderful week.